Within a week of the X-men’s visit to the compound, Logan had vanished.
Whispers flew through the mansion about the sudden disappearance of the irate and ragged creature who usually roamed the mansion’s halls so frequently. At first, many of the students were convinced that he’d been kidnapped, but as the rest of the adults showed no alarm, this rumor faded quickly. Next was the idea that he had run off with his mistress or whoever he was hunting down lately. This was only disproved when someone noticed that Logan’s and Scott’s bikes were both still in the garage. In reality, Logan had just been asleep for four days straight.
There was an open letter on his desk.
Logan,
I’m safe now.
--Rogue
It was enough. Somehow, inexplicably and impossibly, after months of hunting, three words were enough to bring Logan to call off the hunt. The page had smelled like Rogue and a hint of tobacco and diner-smells. The scent could not be faked, and it was no older than the post-date on the letter. She was alive, and had written. She had not been safe before, and she was now, and quite possibly she had heard that someone was looking for her.
It was enough, and Logan fell back from the darkly nervous and ill-tempered place his mind had been whilst hunting and worrying, and into his more normal position as the cantankerous wiseass prone to occasional sageness. The rest of the mansion seemed to breathe a heavy sigh of relief, finally growing relaxed.
So Logan was surprised when, two weeks later, the now-recovered Emma Frost looked so utterly uneasy when she asked to have a word with him, but he obliged, and followed her out into the garden. She led him away from prying ears, and sat down on a white marble garden bench. Logan did not sit, but leaned against the tree beside the bench and watched her.
“I asked Xavier about you. He said that you had been hunting a girl named Rogue for months.” She hesitated. “I know a girl named Rogue, and she’s killed someone very dear to me.” Her voice wavered for a moment, but Emma was strong. “But she was...not in control. She’d had control, hard-won, taken from her.”
“She was in the lab?” Logan asked.
Emma’s lips thinned and she nodded. “She is not one of the ones who came here, but neither would she have gone with Magneto. She was one of the half-dozen that had the ability and good reasons to go off on their own.”
Logan took a deep breath and pulled a cigar and lighter from his pocket, lighting up with practiced ease as Emma watched him. “Stay outta my head,” he said lightly, exhaling his first puff of smoke and feeling all too aware of her curiosity.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Emma said simply. “Not...not if knowing about your past has made Rogue do some of the things she’s done. I have enough things to be justifiably outraged and upset over.”
Logan chuckled a little. “And what has your Rogue done?”
“She’s not mine,” Emma corrected. “She took the one I loved, the one who was mine and who I belonged to.” A flash of pain across her features. “Her mutation does that. It takes the life force, memories, personality, and powers out of people, and into her. If she drains them to death, she keeps every bit of it.”
Logan mulled this over, and had to wonder who she’d taken, to learn so much of him. “Why are ya tellin’ me this now?”
Emma looked at him sharply, her eyes the color and temperature of glaciers. “Because you looked for her when she vanished. Because I saw the way you looked before that last letter got here.” She looked away. “Hell, just the fact that she wrote you another letter was incentive.”
“How do you know her?”
“I’ve been providing her a place to live, on the few occasions she’s ever stayed still long enough to need one, and getting her the connections and procedures that she needed in order to gain control of her mutation. In turn, she has donated generously to my school and...quietly gotten out of my hair a few public figures dead set on our destruction.” Her facial expression took on a hint of admiration. “She’s got a very keen set of skills in technological and politic savvy, and she’s ruthless as anyone on earth.”
Logan considered this. “You don’t know where she is.” It wasn’t a question.
“If she means to meet you, she’ll find you.”
“Why has she been doing all of this? The letters. For me.” Logan’s eyes were locked onto Emma’s, his gaze intense and fierce.
She did not balk. “Because she thinks that you deserve to know, that she has the skills and abilities to inform you...and that she has some sense of purpose when she hunts. It’s, in all likelihood, the same reason that she did not leave Magneto behind when she and Fury evacuated the compound, even though the man had tried to kill her in his machine to make a few human leaders into mutants who would die within days of mutation. It’s the same reason that she had continued to watch over my school like a silent and unseen sentinel, quietly and ruthlessly removing threats to the peace we have there, even once she had control of her mutation and no longer had any need for me.” Emma swallowed thickly. “Maybe it’s why those bastards had to work for over a month, with drugs and electroshock and attempts at reverse-surgery, before they could force her mutation to activate at their whim to get her to drain...” Emma swallowed again as a few tears escaped her eyes, but her face was still stony as she looked at Logan.
And Logan looked back, trying to absorb this knowledge, trying to imagine a woman like this, and all too easily understanding the thoughts behind her actions: The world will not be like this within the reach of my arm.
Emma looked away. “And I swear to God, she’s barely twenty, and I’m terrified of what she could become.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Just like every human in the world is terrified of the kids at this school, and yours.” He puffed on his cigar.
“She could kill even you, Wolverine,” Emma said quietly. “She took out my invincible Carol Danvers; she could easily drain you until you don’t heal any more, ever again.”
Logan shook his head. “She won’t.”
Emma took a deep breath, and let it out. “No. She won’t. Not of her own volition. And she was already so goddamned paranoid, no one will ever have the chance to control her again. Especially not now that she has Carol’s powers.”
It took Logan a moment to make the complete connection: that Emma had been in love with a woman named Carol, whom Rogue had killed. It hardly fazed him. He watched the pale ice queen in silence for a few moments until she finally took a deep breath and got to her feet.
“I wanted you to know that she does exist, and what she is. Any more than that, I’m not even sure I know.” She turned to walk away, back toward the mansion.
“You could give me a physical description, a list of her favorite haunts around that school of yours, the account numbers you got the donations from...”
Emma Frost turned and looked at Logan one last time, her pale blonde hair falling in her face a little, but not quite obscuring her bright blue eyes. “I could.” She smiled faintly, coldly. “But she can hurt me worse than your adamantium can, so I hardly see why I should.”
Logan watched her walk away, already planning his trip to visit her school.
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